News and commentary on the autism epidemic and my beautiful boy who is living with autism.

June 27, 2007

Handley: America, Meet Our Unvaccinated Kids

J.B. Handley introduces America to its unvaccinated children today on the Rescue Post.

In this post he offered the data from the Generation Rescue Survey released today that shows that vaccinated children have a 2.5 times higher risk of developing a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism as compared to non vaccinated children.

America, Meet Our Unvaccinated Kids
By J.B. Handley

For the first time ever, we know something about them that may help our kids.

Yup, they live right down the street from you, they are 5.6% of the population, and they have less asthma, less ADHD, and less autism than our kids seem to have. At least according to our survey.

Do we expect you to believe us? Not really. Not if you’re a member of the mainstream media or the mainstream medical establishment. But, we really hope you will look at our data. Because today, unlike the CDC, we are making all of our data public simultaneously with the release of our survey. Crunch away, and decide for yourself.

We followed a very straightforward process, so anyone can retrace our steps. We told a market research firm what we wanted to know. They designed a questionnaire they felt would get us an answer. We approved the questionnaire. They ran the survey and sent us the data, which you can now access. Decide for yourself.

Some of the numbers really jump out, particularly amongst the boys. A “Risk Ratio” is a way to compare prevalence, so that if 10% of vax kids and 5% of unvax kids have ADHD, the Risk Ratio is 2.0, or a 100% difference. Risk Ratios above 2.0 tend to be allowed in a court of law to show correlation. We found many Risk Ratios well in excess of 2.0, and some higher than 4.0, the equivalent of a 300% difference. Decide for yourself.

Have we proved anything today? Yes and no. We’ve proved that unvaccinated kids are easy to find, and that a straightforward survey yielded some disturbing results. What we haven’t done is design a study with enough scale and controls to be published in a first-tier, peer-reviewed journal. But, we’ve certainly highlighted the screaming need for such a study to happen.

So, now what?

Everyone should write Dan Olmsted and thank him for his Age of Autism series from UPI. He’s the one who asked about unvaccinated kids first, and asked it loudest. He even asked Julie Gerberding, CDC Director. He just kept on asking it until we got so tired thinking about what an obvious question it was that we did something about it.

Our data should be scrutinized, analyzed, challenged, and debated by any and everyone in the autism community who cares to do so. (If you want a copy of the Excel spreadsheet with the primary data in it, email me and I will send it to you.)

Everyone and their grandmother needs to cajole their Congressperson to jump on the bandwagon and support Carolyn Maloney's Bill to study unvaccinated children.

This incredibly brave Congresswoman from New York said in a press release yesterday: “What is ultimately needed to resolve this issue one way or the other is a comprehensive national study comparing outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. As the most scientifically advanced country in the world, we should be jumping at the chance to conduct a comprehensive national study to resolve the questions that have been raised. Parents deserve answers, and children deserve no less than absolutely certainty and safety.”

The autism community should pull together and fund our own independent study, in addition to the Maloney bill, to gather as much data as quickly as possible. Autism Speaks, with the biggest war chest, should take this opportunity to fund or lead the funding for such a study, and help put this issue to rest once and for all. It would be a great opportunity for them to repair a badly burned bridge with many of us, and I hope they jump at the chance. The study must be run by researchers who have no history in this fight, on either side of the argument, and it must have the scale and controls to achieve wide acceptance through journal publication.

As for me, nothing much changes. My son is getting better, and we think the road map drawn by considering him “vaccine injured” is why. Knowing cause is so incredibly important to figuring out how to help and treat our kids, and I’m grateful for the pioneers who have been demanding answers for years. My wife and I hope, in some small way, that this survey moves things forward, and creates a deafening demand from parents for more answers. Now.